It's been an absolutely insane year for gaming. A lot of good franchises dropped this year; let's hear your personal GOTYs.

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My personal GOTY... is Platinum Games' Bayonetta.
Oozing style from every aspect of the game, from the jazzy, breathy music to the bizarre 'fashions' that everybody seems to wear, Bayonetta's warped sensibilities provide an entertaining backdrop for you to do ridiculously insane things and to do them with ease. I'm a big fan of deep stories and of seeing what games can do in the storytelling medium, but let's not beat around the bush here: Bayonetta's 'story' is just an excuse for awesome shit to happen, and for it to happen stylishly. And I don't care that it doesn't have a story that makes me think, or that it's perfectly content to make no sense whatsoever; it does it entertainingly, I loved most of the characters in it, and that's all I was looking for. I have some further thoughts regarding the design and construction of Bayonetta, but they're not really relevent to a GOTY discussion.

To me, one of the most important aspects of a game - any game - is how well it controls and to what extent the player has influence over the player avatar, and nowhere else have I felt this is better addressed than in Bayonetta. I've never felt like I had such control over a character before; there's nothing you cannot interrupt, nothing you can't cancel out of. Combat looks simple - and in practice, kind of is; no need for super-ridiculous combo mashing here - but matters of timing, dodge offset, and weapon choices, not to mention the insatiable bird/angel army of death that you will be fighting, make combat fast, challenging, and fair. You never feel that the game has cheesed you or that it's cheated to crush you; any failing is on you and you alone.

For fluid, stylistic gameplay; for making me feel like an incredible badass; for chewing up nearly 100 hours of my life; for Sega retro references and letting me punch things with my hair, Bayonetta is my Game Of The Year for 2010.